Ajde Ana

Near the end of the press conference following Ana Ivanovic's 6-4, 6-3 win over Dinara Safina in the French Open final, Ubaldo Scanagatta, superstar Italian blogger and all-around scalawag, jokingly posed this question with a straight face:

"I want you to know that you have already beaten the stats of Justine Henin, because last year she say 14 times, Allez. You say 17 times today, Adje.  Even in the middle of the night sometimes you wake up and you turn and you say, Adje?"

"I'm sure tonight I will," Ivanovic replied, cracking up everyone, including herself. ". . . if I sleep at all."

She went on to explain that lately, though, because of the presence of her team and coaches, she's been reflexively tempted to cry out, "Come on!" (which means roughly the same thing).

"People back home (in Serbia), I don't think they like that very much," Ivanovic said. She then happily demonstrated how she catches herself starting to exhort herself in English, only to revert to her native tongue, and added,"It's something I think about a little bit."

It's also something we might think about, in a symbolic way, now that Ivanovic has taken a great step toward transcending her national identity - something that tennis stars, with increasing frequency, accomplish - whether they like it or not. The halcyon days when she was just a little girl - at first, a little girl loaded with baby fat and saddled with questionable fitness - happily representing a developing tennis nation are over. She's now Ana Ivanovic, international tennis superstar, and it's bound to transform her - one thinks of Maria Sharapova last year, trash-talking about how eager she was to help mother Russia kick some U.S. buttski in Fed Cup competition. Can you say "irony"? Or, "lip service?"

But Ana Is no Maria, and that's a good thing, less because Sharapova is a defective citizen of tennis nation (which she's not) than because Ana is a new, refreshing face among its ruling elite. As her manager, Dan Holzmann, told us after the final, "She is very different from Maria, and that will show. It's not really a competition between them, I think we all have our space."

Some people remain skeptical that a promising young player turned Grand Slam contender and now turned Grand Slam champion can be as "nice" as Ivanovic appears to be. But the confirmations continue rolling in. "Did you see what Ana did when that ballboy was struggling with the weight of the bouquet while escorting her out to the court?" Holzmann said. "She tried to help him carry it, even though she was about to play a Grand Slam final. That's the kind of girl she is. A kind person."

Hey, we don't have to declare her the next Mother Theresa or anything (isn't it funny how a tennis star sends our KAD compasses wildly spinning between the polar opposites?) but I'm just sayin'.

The subject came up in the press conference as well, when Matt Cronin asked if Ana felt she had finally silenced the critics who suggested that she was "too nice" or "too sweet" to have a Grand Slam champ's requisite killer instinct. She replied: "I try. You know, I think once you are on that court it's - yeah, it's much easier said than done. . . but you have to be a killer, And you have to, you know, put them under pressure and show your presence and stuff. . ."

Am I the only one who noticed how easily the word "killer" rolled off her tongue, between giggling bouts?

You have to.  . .put them under pressure. . .To me, this was the ruling motif in today's final, and I thought it a fine, understated demonstration of the aplomb and command shown by worth Grand Slam champs. A glance at the scoreline will confirm that this wasn't a great match, but Safina played well, at least right up to the two critical occasions in the match when Ivanovic successfully tightened down on the reins and denied Safina's attempts to shake the bit and gallop off with the second set.

The first time was in the sixth game of the set, with Ivanovic a set up, serving and leading, 3-2. Safina fought hard to dismiss two hold points, and after the third deuce she took the advantage when Ivanovic ended a rally with a backhand error. But Ivanovic quelled Safina's rebellion by smacking a backhand winner down the line, and while it took her two more ad points to close out the game, she did it by eliciting the second of two consecutive forehand errors from Safina.

After surviving that scare to take a 4-2 lead, Ivanovic pushed Safina to six deuces in the very next game. Again, Safina produced some sizzling groundstrokes and despite undermining her cause with back-to-back double faults at one point, she survived. Instead of having a letdown or dwelling on her failure to secure an insurance break, Ivanovic did what great players so often do: she struck like a cobra, when her opponent most needed a respite from the pressure and a little time to catch her breath. Ivanovic lost just one point in the last two games, reeling off seven straight to end it on her first match point.

I asked Ivanovic if she was particularly proud of the way she retained control of the match, and she said: "Yeah, I was. I'm just really proud of my efforts today. It wasn't an easy match. She played really well, I thought. You know, it was few mental games there today, so I was really happy that in a key moment I managed to stay strong and calm, in the second set especially. . . I kept my composure and stepped up and won my service game and managed to break her again. I'm very, very happy."

I couldn't help but think of some word Bjorn Borg spoke just a few hours earlier, in an illuminating press conference of his own (I'll be using much of that material in a post on the men's final in a few hours). "But, of course, when you have that confidence, tennis is about confidence,"  Borg said. "I mean, it's such a mental game, tennis.  If you feel really confident all the time, then (it's) such a big advantage.  You feel like you can play well under pressure, you win the most important points, you win the crucial points in the match. . ."

So to me, this was a far better win than the scores and the resume of Ivanovic's opponent - a maiden Grand Slam finalist - may indicate. Safina wasn't nervous; she played a solid match. Ivanovic, meanwhile, took a quantum leap as a competitor. Was it just four months ago that she bawled her eyes out after losing an Australian final (to Sharapova) which she felt she could - and should - win?

One technical note: anyone else notice how Ivanovic seems to have perfected this unusual inside-out forehand, which she hits after taking a step back with her right foot? It's a slick shot that will give nightmares to any tennis coach who hammers away with the familiar message: Step into the ball!

Overall, Ivanovic is an incredibly disciplined, cover-all-the-bases, take it one step at a time player. That I have no urge to play around with murky and highly speculative tangents here tells me something; Ana slammed the door on those as cleanly and firmly as she swept aside Safina today.

And poor Safina, you had to feel for her. She was subdued in her press conference, and at one point someone observed that he hadn't seen brother, Marat, in the player box. She said, "No, he's not here. Somehow, I thought that he might come, but unfortunately he didn't came."

Now I'll be the first to admit that faced with a similar situation, I might do just as Marat had done. Families and sibling relations run the gamut, and we sometimes forget that, in the end, they are what they are, regardless of the judgmental eyes on them.  But I know a lot of people around here were baffled that Marat couldn't be bothered to make the short trip over from London to lend his sister support. Given her tender statement above, you almost think it might have helped.

As Ubaldo said, Marat probably decided to watch it on TV. I'm not so sure he would have wanted to be pinned down like that - what about that pick-up soccer game at Queens Club, or the Saturday matinee of Sex and the City? It's not like he couldn't get the scores and highlights tonight on the BBC news, right?

Ajde, Ana. Get used to it.